Back up indexes

Overview

This document describes how to make backup copies of your indexes using collections.

To learn how to create an index from a collection, see Manage indexes.

⚠️

Warning

This document uses collections. This is a public preview
feature. Test thoroughly before using this feature with production workloads.

Create a backup using a collection

To create a backup of your index, use the create_collection operation. A collection is a static copy of your index that only consumes storage.

Example

The following example creates a collection named example-collection from an index named example-index.

pinecone.create_collection("example-collection", "example-index")

await pinecone.createCollection({
  name: "example-collection",
  source: "example-index",
});

curl -i -X POST https://controller.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io/collections \
  -H 'Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
        "name": "example-collection",
        "source": "example-index"
  }'

Check the status of a collection

To retrieve the status of the process creating a collection and the size of the collection, use the describe_collection operation. Specify the name of the collection to check. You can only call describe_collection on a collection in the current project.

The describe_collection operation returns an object containing key-value pairs representing the name of the collection, the size in bytes, and the creation status of the collection.

Example

The following example gets the creation status and size of a collection named example-collection.

pinecone.describe_collection("example-collection")

const collectionDescription = await pinecone.describeCollection(
  "example-collection"
);
console.log(collectionDescription.data);

curl -i -X GET https://controller.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io/collections/example-collection \
  -H 'Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY'

Results:

CollectionDescription(name='test-collection', size=3818809, status='Ready')

List your collections

To get a list of the collections in the current project, use the list_collections operation.

Example

The following example gets a list of all collections in the current project.

pinecone.list_collections()

const collections = await pinecone.listCollections();
console.log(collections.data);

curl -i -X GET https://controller.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io/collections \
  -H 'Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY'

Results

example-collection

Delete a collection

To delete a collection, use the delete_collection operation. Specify the name of the collection to delete.

Deleting the collection takes several minutes. During this time, the describe_collection operation returns the status "deleting".

Example

The following example deletes the collection example-collection.

pinecone.delete_collection("example-collection")

await pinecone.deleteCollection("example-collection");

curl -i -X DELETE https://controller.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io/collections/example-collection \
  -H 'Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY'